I wonder if Barack Obama will go down in American history as the Elvis Presley of politics.
Elvis’s field was music. It wasn’t the music, but the way he sang it, and the way he moved doing it.
Elvis Presley was the first white man who knew how to sing black music. When Sam Phillips, the Sun Records studio owner who “discovered” Elvis, first heard it in 1954, he knew instantly that it was unique, extremely valuable, and utterly revolutionary. From that first Memphis session, and the capturing of “That’s All Right, Mama,” on vinyl, Elvis Presley’s voice radiated out in a widening gyre and all who heard it realized in less than three minutes that something was being changed forever. Little did they know. They hadn’t seen him yet.
Barack Obama’s field is politics. But everybody says it isn’t the politics; it’s the way he says it, and the way he moves doing it. He has created a media sensation which begets a public sensation which feeds the media sensation, and his critics say he has done it without saying or doing anything substantive. But maybe he has. Sen. Barack Obama sounds like the first black man who knows how to talk white politics.
People are all shook up. Here’s Maureen Dowd, quoting Sen. Hillary Clinton: “I think that there is a certain phenomenon associated with his candidacy, and I am really struck by that because it is very much about him and his personality and his presentation.”
She could say the exact same thing in, oh, 1955, about the young stardom candidate Elvis Presley, as the word was starting to get out. Then as now, she would have been saying it negatively, using the word “phenomenon” to suggest something transparent, or impermanent, hoping it would go away. Is a phenomenon transparent and impermanent? Or can it be substantive and permanent?
Answer: in 1959, RCA Records released Elvis’s second album of gold records. Its title: “50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong.” He’s on the cover, skinny and loose as sin in that slinky gold suit with the diamond lapels and cuffs, all that black hair, slicked and twitchy, the eyes, the pout, the grin, the grin of a boy on the road to becoming not only the King of Rock and Roll, but of an entire new culture.
Is that where the American experience is with the current phenomenon, a black man out of nowhere talking presidential politics with a personality and presentation and color that nobody has ever seen before? Is that why some people are alarmed, some begrudging, some admiring, and some unabashedly beguiled?
We all seem to be “really struck by that,” as Sen. Clinton opines. We all seem to be united in confusion, which is typical of people trying to get a handle on something that gives every appearance of being a tectonic shift, something rising, something maybe being born that in our lifetimes will take the form of a new culture.
Sen. Clinton can’t explain it, Tim Russert can’t explain it. Republicans can’t explain it. But we know that it is there, and it is substantive. Standing next to it, Hillary Clinton looks like Rosemary Clooney, and she seems to understand, as Rosemary no doubt did in 1955, that there isn’t a thing she can do about it.
February 28, 2008
February 22, 2008
A Question of Leadership
Not much evidence of leadership in any of the three principal presidential candidates today.
The closing question at the Austin debate addressed leadership, and what "leadership" meant at a time of crisis.
I wanted to hear one of the candidates explain that leadership is principle-based, but situational, dependent on some combination of courage, integrity, confidence and intelligence with which the leader has his or her best chance to inspire trust, commitment and affection in the people, so they are willing to follow him or her through the situation to the other side.
I didn't hear anything like that. Sen. Obama took off on an "arc of life" answer that mentioned neither crisis nor leadership. Sen. Clinton got a laugh about having been in a crisis or two, and fashioned a feel-good commentary that played well, but I was waiting for her to say something about what she would do if a crisis was coming up the national driveway.
Leadership is difficult to talk about under pressure, which is exactly the kind of situation that requires leadership. I would like to see one of these presidential debates dedicated to the question, "What is leadership?" It is a topic that would easily fill 90 minutes, and I think everyone involved – participants and audience – would know more about leadership when it was finished.
I would want Sen. McCain to be a party to that debate. He was an officer, a commander, and a prisoner of war, so, for him, discussing leadership would be as easy as drinking coffee. Yet in The New York Times on Friday was a column by David Brooks giving the impression that leadership is something Sen. McCain no longer practices.
That was not the column's intent. Brooks sought to expose the background of a bitter "rift, which has caused duplicity and anger to seep into the campaign of this fine man." This rift, between two men close to McCain, Rick Davis and John Weaver, Brooks wrote, is "the background for the article my colleagues at The New York Times published Thursday."
That article, of course, was about Sen. McCain's relationships with lobbyists in general, and with one in particular, which McCain's advisors feared had edged dangerously close to romance. The article hinged on information provided by two sources within the McCain organization. Brooks said the two camps, Davis and Weaver, blamed the other for talking to The Times. He said the two "share a mutual hatred . . . that is absolute, mutual and blinding." The McCain campaign became "a house divided against itself," from which "poisons spread outward."
Poisons spreading outward, from a house divided against itself, which seeks White House residency? I think that situation would qualify as the kind of crisis requiring leadership in a presidential candidate, not today, but years ago, when the grand and mutual Davis-Weaver hatred arose. Yet, as Brooks concludes, "The poisons have yet to be drained."
So today has been quite a bummer. I know so many of us are counting the hours until Inauguration Day, but dear God, please, after the Bush years, let's make leadership a primary criterion in the selection of his replacement, and insist on candidates that know leadership from third base, and will run hard for it.
The closing question at the Austin debate addressed leadership, and what "leadership" meant at a time of crisis.
I wanted to hear one of the candidates explain that leadership is principle-based, but situational, dependent on some combination of courage, integrity, confidence and intelligence with which the leader has his or her best chance to inspire trust, commitment and affection in the people, so they are willing to follow him or her through the situation to the other side.
I didn't hear anything like that. Sen. Obama took off on an "arc of life" answer that mentioned neither crisis nor leadership. Sen. Clinton got a laugh about having been in a crisis or two, and fashioned a feel-good commentary that played well, but I was waiting for her to say something about what she would do if a crisis was coming up the national driveway.
Leadership is difficult to talk about under pressure, which is exactly the kind of situation that requires leadership. I would like to see one of these presidential debates dedicated to the question, "What is leadership?" It is a topic that would easily fill 90 minutes, and I think everyone involved – participants and audience – would know more about leadership when it was finished.
I would want Sen. McCain to be a party to that debate. He was an officer, a commander, and a prisoner of war, so, for him, discussing leadership would be as easy as drinking coffee. Yet in The New York Times on Friday was a column by David Brooks giving the impression that leadership is something Sen. McCain no longer practices.
That was not the column's intent. Brooks sought to expose the background of a bitter "rift, which has caused duplicity and anger to seep into the campaign of this fine man." This rift, between two men close to McCain, Rick Davis and John Weaver, Brooks wrote, is "the background for the article my colleagues at The New York Times published Thursday."
That article, of course, was about Sen. McCain's relationships with lobbyists in general, and with one in particular, which McCain's advisors feared had edged dangerously close to romance. The article hinged on information provided by two sources within the McCain organization. Brooks said the two camps, Davis and Weaver, blamed the other for talking to The Times. He said the two "share a mutual hatred . . . that is absolute, mutual and blinding." The McCain campaign became "a house divided against itself," from which "poisons spread outward."
Poisons spreading outward, from a house divided against itself, which seeks White House residency? I think that situation would qualify as the kind of crisis requiring leadership in a presidential candidate, not today, but years ago, when the grand and mutual Davis-Weaver hatred arose. Yet, as Brooks concludes, "The poisons have yet to be drained."
So today has been quite a bummer. I know so many of us are counting the hours until Inauguration Day, but dear God, please, after the Bush years, let's make leadership a primary criterion in the selection of his replacement, and insist on candidates that know leadership from third base, and will run hard for it.
February 13, 2008
History, maybe, over the horizon
Barack Obama did his speech thing after the Potomac Primary on Tuesday night, and it was riveting. Television talking heads back in the studio talked all over the speeches made by John McCain and Hillary Clinton. During Obama’s speech, nobody made a sound. The camera didn’t waver. Obama, young, lean, confident, and black, speaks in three-word declarations collected into sentences delivered in an inflection from which the declarations fall like meteors, every few seconds, into audiences that can’t stand more than three or four of these hits before igniting into a helpless roar.
After his speech, the talking heads went for reactions from the political elite. A camera landed on the face of the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York. At least a month ago, watching this very long campaign unfolding, it occurred to me that no one, inside or outside of media, seemed very excited that one of the presidential candidates this November is going to be a woman, or a black man. After 209 years and 43 white male presidents, I thought this was pretty historic. Maybe I just wasn’t ready for it, and the rest of the nation was.
Then I saw Al Sharpton’s face. He didn’t look ready for it, either, even after 40 years of civil rights toil without which Obama candidacies might not exist. I went to my computer and Googled a 1967 movie, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”
And there it was: Sidney Poitier, Dr. James Wade Prentice, young, lean, confident, black doctor getting an earful from his father about his intention to marry a white woman, the daughter of well-to-do San Francisco parents. Dr. Prentice listens for a few minutes and then takes the floor. (They’re in the white family’s hilltop home, in the father’s study.) In short, declarative sentences, he tells his father how it is with him, and he ends this way:
“You are 30 years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight be off our backs! You understand, you've got to get off my back! Dad... Dad, you're my father. I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.”
Times, vocabulary, attitudes and prejudices have changed since 1967. But what if the 2008 movie were “Guess Who’s Coming to Washington,” the elder was Rev. Al Sharpton, and the kid was Barack Obama? The New York Times this week published a long feature about Obama’s candidacy and race. The headline: “Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide.” When Sharpton organized a march in Jena, Louisiana, protesting charges made against six black teenagers, Obama publicly supported the protest saying “the cases against the students were not a matter of black vs. white, but a matter of right vs. wrong.” Then he phoned Sharpton and declined to march, “because he did not want to politicize the issue.”
Whatever it takes, along the racial divide, Obama must think of himself as a man. In 1967, Dr. Prentice’s dad, hearing that, is not moved, but grumpy. But both son and father are anxious to hear what the white parents have to say. After long thought, the father, Matt Drayton (played by Spencer Tracy), addresses the group, saying he approves of the marriage, because “in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel, for each other.”
And then he tells the couple: “There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say ‘screw all those people!’”
And that is the source of this history that I am feeling. I never dreamed of any circumstance where Al Sharpton and I might stand shoulder to shoulder and say, “Screw all those people!” But it could happen.
After his speech, the talking heads went for reactions from the political elite. A camera landed on the face of the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York. At least a month ago, watching this very long campaign unfolding, it occurred to me that no one, inside or outside of media, seemed very excited that one of the presidential candidates this November is going to be a woman, or a black man. After 209 years and 43 white male presidents, I thought this was pretty historic. Maybe I just wasn’t ready for it, and the rest of the nation was.
Then I saw Al Sharpton’s face. He didn’t look ready for it, either, even after 40 years of civil rights toil without which Obama candidacies might not exist. I went to my computer and Googled a 1967 movie, “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?”
And there it was: Sidney Poitier, Dr. James Wade Prentice, young, lean, confident, black doctor getting an earful from his father about his intention to marry a white woman, the daughter of well-to-do San Francisco parents. Dr. Prentice listens for a few minutes and then takes the floor. (They’re in the white family’s hilltop home, in the father’s study.) In short, declarative sentences, he tells his father how it is with him, and he ends this way:
“You are 30 years older than I am. You and your whole lousy generation believes the way it was for you is the way it's got to be. And not until your whole generation has lain down and died will the dead weight be off our backs! You understand, you've got to get off my back! Dad... Dad, you're my father. I'm your son. I love you. I always have and I always will. But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.”
Times, vocabulary, attitudes and prejudices have changed since 1967. But what if the 2008 movie were “Guess Who’s Coming to Washington,” the elder was Rev. Al Sharpton, and the kid was Barack Obama? The New York Times this week published a long feature about Obama’s candidacy and race. The headline: “Seeking Unity, Obama Feels Pull of Racial Divide.” When Sharpton organized a march in Jena, Louisiana, protesting charges made against six black teenagers, Obama publicly supported the protest saying “the cases against the students were not a matter of black vs. white, but a matter of right vs. wrong.” Then he phoned Sharpton and declined to march, “because he did not want to politicize the issue.”
Whatever it takes, along the racial divide, Obama must think of himself as a man. In 1967, Dr. Prentice’s dad, hearing that, is not moved, but grumpy. But both son and father are anxious to hear what the white parents have to say. After long thought, the father, Matt Drayton (played by Spencer Tracy), addresses the group, saying he approves of the marriage, because “in the final analysis, it doesn’t matter a damn what we think. The only thing that matters is what they feel, and how much they feel, for each other.”
And then he tells the couple: “There'll be 100 million people right here in this country who will be shocked and offended and appalled and the two of you will just have to ride that out, maybe every day for the rest of your lives. You could try to ignore those people, or you could feel sorry for them and for their prejudice and their bigotry and their blind hatred and stupid fears, but where necessary you'll just have to cling tight to each other and say ‘screw all those people!’”
And that is the source of this history that I am feeling. I never dreamed of any circumstance where Al Sharpton and I might stand shoulder to shoulder and say, “Screw all those people!” But it could happen.
February 04, 2008
The Super Bowl business
Here are a few things to remember about the Super Bowl’s place in the American cultural landscape.
It was the most-watched Super Bowl ever, attracting 97.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. The total U.S. population is 303.3 million, which means that 205.7 million Americans on Sunday were doing something other than watching the Super Bowl. If the Super Bowl is supposed to be the most important television event in America, it holds that importance with less than one-third of the population.
The Nielsen rating for the game was 43.3, the highest rating for a Super Bowl since 1997. That means that 56.7 television households in the U.S. were watching something else, or nothing at all.
The Super Bowl is big, but it does not define “us.” I always watch, because as a football fan, I am part of the Super Bowl crowd. There may not be more than 45 million of us in the mix. A local television morning news poll today showed that, of those responding, 50 percent watched because of the game. Ten percent watched because of the commercials. Twenty percent watched because of the halftime show (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). Ten percent watched because of “the food.” That leave 10 unidentified percent who watched for reasons too minor to identify, which would account for those who watched because they wanted to see Ryan Seacrest, the “American Idol” host, who had a part in the pre-game show, interviewing celebrities.
Media professionals (not the media itself) have successfully turned the Super Bowl into an event with attractions for varied demographic groups in order to maximize the sets of eyeballs that the NFL and the contracting network (in this case Fox) use to attract top-dollar advertisers. This year, the Super Bowl advertising rates were $2.7 million for 30 seconds of commercial time.
That’s a lot of money, but advertisers are happy to pay it because they know very few Americans, relatively, would spend a dime for a six-pack of Bud Light, not to mention $5.95. So they need a lot of eyeballs to get a decent return. Advertisers in general weep with joy at a return of three percent on a commercial, even from their target demographic of 18-to-34-year-old males. A lot of those watch the Super Bowl for the game, and for the halftime show, and for the food, and for Ryan Seacrest. So they get decent bang for the buck for their $2.7 million, even though they know going in, that 97 percent of the viewer population (which is less than a third of the total population) is not going to bite.
Everyone associated with the Super Bowl, even the NFL – most of all the NFL – understands the Super Bowl is not about the football business. It is about the television business. And television has a strong “we” effect. If a significant group of people watch something on television, it gives the impression that “we” are watching. All of us, and it must be near our cultural core. Not so. Top-rated sitcoms routinely get Nielsen ratings of 20 or less, meaning 80 percent of the television universe is doing something else. Oprah has achieved a global we effect that gets a rating of 4 or less. The Super Bowl was fun, but only a minor cultural diversion.
It was the most-watched Super Bowl ever, attracting 97.6 million viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. The total U.S. population is 303.3 million, which means that 205.7 million Americans on Sunday were doing something other than watching the Super Bowl. If the Super Bowl is supposed to be the most important television event in America, it holds that importance with less than one-third of the population.
The Nielsen rating for the game was 43.3, the highest rating for a Super Bowl since 1997. That means that 56.7 television households in the U.S. were watching something else, or nothing at all.
The Super Bowl is big, but it does not define “us.” I always watch, because as a football fan, I am part of the Super Bowl crowd. There may not be more than 45 million of us in the mix. A local television morning news poll today showed that, of those responding, 50 percent watched because of the game. Ten percent watched because of the commercials. Twenty percent watched because of the halftime show (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers). Ten percent watched because of “the food.” That leave 10 unidentified percent who watched for reasons too minor to identify, which would account for those who watched because they wanted to see Ryan Seacrest, the “American Idol” host, who had a part in the pre-game show, interviewing celebrities.
Media professionals (not the media itself) have successfully turned the Super Bowl into an event with attractions for varied demographic groups in order to maximize the sets of eyeballs that the NFL and the contracting network (in this case Fox) use to attract top-dollar advertisers. This year, the Super Bowl advertising rates were $2.7 million for 30 seconds of commercial time.
That’s a lot of money, but advertisers are happy to pay it because they know very few Americans, relatively, would spend a dime for a six-pack of Bud Light, not to mention $5.95. So they need a lot of eyeballs to get a decent return. Advertisers in general weep with joy at a return of three percent on a commercial, even from their target demographic of 18-to-34-year-old males. A lot of those watch the Super Bowl for the game, and for the halftime show, and for the food, and for Ryan Seacrest. So they get decent bang for the buck for their $2.7 million, even though they know going in, that 97 percent of the viewer population (which is less than a third of the total population) is not going to bite.
Everyone associated with the Super Bowl, even the NFL – most of all the NFL – understands the Super Bowl is not about the football business. It is about the television business. And television has a strong “we” effect. If a significant group of people watch something on television, it gives the impression that “we” are watching. All of us, and it must be near our cultural core. Not so. Top-rated sitcoms routinely get Nielsen ratings of 20 or less, meaning 80 percent of the television universe is doing something else. Oprah has achieved a global we effect that gets a rating of 4 or less. The Super Bowl was fun, but only a minor cultural diversion.
February 03, 2008
The end of the right place and right time
Here is an excerpt from my book, "Warbirds – How They Played the Game," about the Abilene Eagles' 49-game Texas high school football winning streak at mid-20th century:
"A win over bitter rival San Angelo, 87 miles southwest of Abilene on U.S. 277, was always satisfying. And it was the Eagles’ seventh victory against three defeats for the 1952 season, earning them a third-place finish in District 1-AAAA, by consensus the most rugged district in Texas high school football. A respectable season, Abilenians rationalized.
"That same day, the defending state Class AAAA champion Lubbock Westerners beat the Amarillo Golden Sandies, 40-13, to complete a second straight undefeated regular season and repeat as District 1-AAAA champions.
"Abilene, 170 miles west of Dallas, was the easternmost team in the district. Other teams in sprawling District 1-AAAA stretched from West Central Texas up the Caprock to the Panhandle. They were Lubbock, Amarillo, San Angelo, the Midland Bulldogs, the Odessa Bronchos, the Borger Bulldogs and the Pampa Harvesters. In 1952, Abilene, with a strong defense but a sporadic offense that only scored 120 points all season, collected wins over Fort Worth Arlington Heights, Sweetwater, Borger, Amarillo, Midland, Odessa and San Angelo and lost to Breckenridge, Pampa and Lubbock.
"As the Eagles once again hung up their football gear and moved indoors to basketball, Lubbock High swept through the state football playoffs and defeated Baytown, 12-7, to repeat as state Class AAAA champions. It was only the second year that Texas high schools played to a state championship in classes – AAAA, AAA, AA and A – based on school enrollment. Cities with only one high school, like Abilene, in Class AAAA, had populations in the 40,000-75,000 range. Abilene’s population of about 60,000 was not as large as Amarillo or Lubbock, but larger than Midland, Odessa and San Angelo. The district’s “small” cities were Borger and Pampa. They were all working-class cities, with economies based on oil, agriculture and ranching, and the boys growing up to play football knew about work . . . ."
To a football fan, living in Abilene in the 1950s has become a lifelong definition of being in the right place at the right time. District 1-AAAA was a great district, deserving of its reputation as the most rugged in Texas high school football, and its physical location, west of the 100th Meridian, the so-called "arid line," added to its aura of toughness. Another "Warbirds" excerpt:
"Piety was a strong feature in West Texas thinking, and it had found a particular focus in Abilene, where there was a church for every 100 people, and three denominational colleges: Hardin-Simmons, operated by the Baptists; McMurry, operated by the Methodists; and Abilene Christian, operated by the Church of Christ. The 'Western Parson,' who hosted an after-school show for kids, was a local TV celebrity.
"Much of this attitude had been imported with the early Texas settlers from the South, who brought along their Christian fundamentalism, and it was reinforced by living in a region where God’s stern hand was so evident in the lay of the land and the extremes of the heavens. It was not an environment in which to gloat or to tease fate. Safer all around to be tough as a boot but meek as a lamb, and on this principle was the culture grounded . . . ."
It was an unbeatable, richly romantic environment for the kind of football played in the cities of District 1-AAAA, which by the end of the 1950s had earned a nickname: "The Little Southwest Conference." Observers seriously believed that there were teams in 1-AAAA that could beat some of the college teams in the Southwest Conference. After watching Abilene beat Waco in 1956, Waco Times-Herald sportswriter George Raborn wrote, “Abilene’s first team played three full quarters, and looked strong enough to beat either of the freshman teams that had played the night before at Baylor Stadium. In fact it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say Abilene could beat the Texas Longhorns.”
The Abilene fan's dream began to unravel very quickly, because of changing Texas demographics and population distributions. In the autumn of 1955, the University Interscholastic League announced a realignment for the 1956 season. Abilene would go into District 2-AAAA, with San Angelo, Odessa, Midland and Big Spring. The new 3-AAAA took in Amarillo, Lubbock, Borger, Pampa and Plainview.
Eventually San Angelo would drop into lower classifications, but Abilene, Odessa and Midland stayed locked in fall combat in the Little Southwest Conference for another half-century. Then on Friday, another reclassification – no, call it a tectonic shift – came down from the UIL. Abilene in a Fort Worth district? Old Abilenians are taking this hard, the world over.
"A win over bitter rival San Angelo, 87 miles southwest of Abilene on U.S. 277, was always satisfying. And it was the Eagles’ seventh victory against three defeats for the 1952 season, earning them a third-place finish in District 1-AAAA, by consensus the most rugged district in Texas high school football. A respectable season, Abilenians rationalized.
"That same day, the defending state Class AAAA champion Lubbock Westerners beat the Amarillo Golden Sandies, 40-13, to complete a second straight undefeated regular season and repeat as District 1-AAAA champions.
"Abilene, 170 miles west of Dallas, was the easternmost team in the district. Other teams in sprawling District 1-AAAA stretched from West Central Texas up the Caprock to the Panhandle. They were Lubbock, Amarillo, San Angelo, the Midland Bulldogs, the Odessa Bronchos, the Borger Bulldogs and the Pampa Harvesters. In 1952, Abilene, with a strong defense but a sporadic offense that only scored 120 points all season, collected wins over Fort Worth Arlington Heights, Sweetwater, Borger, Amarillo, Midland, Odessa and San Angelo and lost to Breckenridge, Pampa and Lubbock.
"As the Eagles once again hung up their football gear and moved indoors to basketball, Lubbock High swept through the state football playoffs and defeated Baytown, 12-7, to repeat as state Class AAAA champions. It was only the second year that Texas high schools played to a state championship in classes – AAAA, AAA, AA and A – based on school enrollment. Cities with only one high school, like Abilene, in Class AAAA, had populations in the 40,000-75,000 range. Abilene’s population of about 60,000 was not as large as Amarillo or Lubbock, but larger than Midland, Odessa and San Angelo. The district’s “small” cities were Borger and Pampa. They were all working-class cities, with economies based on oil, agriculture and ranching, and the boys growing up to play football knew about work . . . ."
To a football fan, living in Abilene in the 1950s has become a lifelong definition of being in the right place at the right time. District 1-AAAA was a great district, deserving of its reputation as the most rugged in Texas high school football, and its physical location, west of the 100th Meridian, the so-called "arid line," added to its aura of toughness. Another "Warbirds" excerpt:
"Piety was a strong feature in West Texas thinking, and it had found a particular focus in Abilene, where there was a church for every 100 people, and three denominational colleges: Hardin-Simmons, operated by the Baptists; McMurry, operated by the Methodists; and Abilene Christian, operated by the Church of Christ. The 'Western Parson,' who hosted an after-school show for kids, was a local TV celebrity.
"Much of this attitude had been imported with the early Texas settlers from the South, who brought along their Christian fundamentalism, and it was reinforced by living in a region where God’s stern hand was so evident in the lay of the land and the extremes of the heavens. It was not an environment in which to gloat or to tease fate. Safer all around to be tough as a boot but meek as a lamb, and on this principle was the culture grounded . . . ."
It was an unbeatable, richly romantic environment for the kind of football played in the cities of District 1-AAAA, which by the end of the 1950s had earned a nickname: "The Little Southwest Conference." Observers seriously believed that there were teams in 1-AAAA that could beat some of the college teams in the Southwest Conference. After watching Abilene beat Waco in 1956, Waco Times-Herald sportswriter George Raborn wrote, “Abilene’s first team played three full quarters, and looked strong enough to beat either of the freshman teams that had played the night before at Baylor Stadium. In fact it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to say Abilene could beat the Texas Longhorns.”
The Abilene fan's dream began to unravel very quickly, because of changing Texas demographics and population distributions. In the autumn of 1955, the University Interscholastic League announced a realignment for the 1956 season. Abilene would go into District 2-AAAA, with San Angelo, Odessa, Midland and Big Spring. The new 3-AAAA took in Amarillo, Lubbock, Borger, Pampa and Plainview.
Eventually San Angelo would drop into lower classifications, but Abilene, Odessa and Midland stayed locked in fall combat in the Little Southwest Conference for another half-century. Then on Friday, another reclassification – no, call it a tectonic shift – came down from the UIL. Abilene in a Fort Worth district? Old Abilenians are taking this hard, the world over.
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